The Kosmos was constructed as a perfect sphere, rounded, because that figure both comprehends all other figures, and is, at the same time, the most perfect, and most like to itself.[27] The Demiurgus made it perfectly smooth on the outside, for various reasons.[28] First, it stood in no need of either eyes or ears, because there was nothing outside to be seen or heard. Next, it did not want organs of respiration, inasmuch as there was no outside air to be breathed:— nor nutritive and excrementary organs, because its own decay supplied it with nourishment, so that it was self-sufficing, being constructed as its own agent and its own patient.[29] Moreover the Demiurgus did not furnish it with hands, because there was nothing for it either to grasp or repel — nor with legs, feet, or means of standing, because he assigned to it only one of the seven possible varieties of movement.[30] He gave to it no other movement except that of rotation in a circle, in one and the same place: which is the sort of movement that belongs most to reason and intelligence, while it is impracticable to all other figures except the spherical.[31]
[27] Plato, Timæus, p. 33 B. κυκλοτερὲς αὐτὸ ἐτορνεύσατο, &c.
[28] Plato, Timæus, p. 33 C. λεῖον δὲ δὴ κύκλῳ πᾶν ἔξωθεν αὐτὸ ἀπηκριβοῦτο, πολλῶν χάριν, &c.
Aristotle also maintains that the sphericity of the Kosmos is so exact that no piece of workmanship can make approach to it. (De Cœlo, ii. p. 287, b. 15.)
[29] Plato, Timæus, p. 33 E. On this point the Platonic Timæus is not Pythagorean, but the reverse. The Pythagoreans recognised extraneous to the Kosmos, τὸ ἄπειρον πνεῦμα or τὸ κενόν. The Kosmos was supposed to inhale this vacuum, which penetrating into the interior, formed the separating interstices between its constituent parts (Aristot. Physic. iv. p. 213, b. 22).
[30] Plato, Timæus, p. 34 A. ἐπὶ δὲ τὴν περίοδον ταύτην, ἅτ’ οὐδὲν ποδῶν δέον, ἀσκελὲς καὶ ἄπουν αὐτὸ ἐγέννησεν.
Plato reckons six varieties of rectilinear motion, neither of which was assigned to the Kosmos — forward, backward, upward, downward, to the right, to the left.
[31] Plat. Tim. p. 34 A. κίνησιν γὰρ ἀπένειμεν αὐτῷ τὴν τοῦ σώματος οἰκείαν, τῶν ἕπτα τὴν περὶ νοῦν καὶ φρόνησιν μάλιστα οὔσαν. This predicate respecting circular motion belongs to Plato and not to Aristotle; but Aristotle makes out, in his own way, a strong case to show that circular motion must belong to the Πρῶτον σῶμα, as being the first among all varieties of motion, the most dignified and privileged, the only one which can be for ever uniform and continuous. Aristot. Physic. ix. p. 265, a. 15; De Cœlo, i. pp. 269-270, ii. p. 284, a. 10.
Soul of the Kosmos — its component ingredients — stretched from centre to circumference.
The Kosmos, one and only-begotten, was thus perfect as to its body, including all existent bodily material, — smooth, even, round, and equidistant from its centre to all points of the circumference.[32] The Demiurgus put together at the same time its soul or mind; which he planted in the centre and stretched throughout its body in every direction, — so as not only to reach the circumference, but also to enclose and wrap it round externally. The soul, being intended to guide and govern the body, was formed of appropriate ingredients, three distinct ingredients mixed together: 1. The Same — The Identical — The indivisible, and unchangeable essence of Ideas. 2. The Different — The Plural — The divisible essence of bodies or of the elements. 3. A third compound, formed of both these ingredients melted into one. — These three ingredients — Same, Different, Same and Different in one, — were blended together in one compound, to form the soul of the Kosmos: though the Different was found intractable and hard to conciliate.[33] The mixture was divided, and the portions blended together, according to a scale of harmonic numerical proportion complicated and difficult to follow.[34] The soul of the Kosmos was thus harmonically constituted. Among its constituent elements, the Same, or Identity, is placed in an even and undivided rotation of the outer or sidereal sphere of the Kosmos, — while the Different, or Diversity, is distributed among the rotations, all oblique, of the seven interior or planetary spheres — that is, the five planets, Sun, and Moon. The outer sphere revolved towards the right: the interior spheres in an opposite direction towards the left. The rotatory force of the Same (of the outer Sphere) being not only one and undivided, but connected with and dependent upon the solid revolving axis which traverses the diameter of the Kosmos — is far greater than that of the divided spheres of the Different; which, while striving to revolve in an opposite direction, each by a movement of its own — are overpowered and carried along with the outer sphere, though the time of revolution, in the case of each, is more or less modified by its own inherent counter-moving force.[35]